


Prelude

by Mamcine_Oxfeather



Series: s t i t c h [1]
Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2018-06-02 14:49:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6570394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamcine_Oxfeather/pseuds/Mamcine_Oxfeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scene, city; set, nightfall.  Places.  Lights down.  Curtains up.  Action.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**X x XxX xXx X xX .** p r e s e n t **. Xx X xXx XxX x X**

 

The dingy little back-alley office lists beneath the weight of the commercial building it vivisects, matte wooden doorframe crooked and swollen in autumn damp, its ochre metal door wide and dented and weighty with its swing against your back like a drunk making for the couch they see over your shoulder.  Past that bruiser of a door is a hardy linoleum ecosystem supporting absurdly modern brushed chrome alongside soft worn plyboard gone dark and fragrant from pine solvent.  Occupants of the manilla folder steppes and computer wire jungle include an actual flora, carnivorous though it may be, and a lone once-human who for all Conrad knew was a vegetable (for stupidity) spelled to life with the sheer spite of some Baba Yaga queen from some dirt-dusty pad of Australian desert.

No, not a vegetable.  Cactus.  Cactus  _fruit_ if Conrad was feeling petty.

And like a dry wind through sun-brown outback scrub, Doc Worth's voice rattles past the file stacks as Conrad shoulders through the office door.  "'Ere you go, cupcake."

The thick plastic of the blood bag is cool and smooth, a weighty heft snagged mid-air with a muffled _plaff_ against Conrad's palm - tucking Conrad back to sunnier days and younger friends, to field carnivals and their pudding-filled water balloon toss. His catch was always rugby-ready, back in the day, though there was no use bragging the point. 'Pudding-tosser' would have fit snugly alongside Doc Worth's use of confectionery nicknames and sexual innuendo, a bridge fording colorful insults.

Conrad holds the bag pinched by its sterile plastic corner. "I can pay for this, you know. I _have_ a job."

Doc Worth snorts, disrupting the cloud of acrid smoke haloing his high forehead. "Keep your milk-money, Mary Jane."

Conrad sniffs, eyes narrowing. "I don't want to owe you anything."

"I can respect that. Now get." Worth hunched further over his coverless book, bony shoulders standing in sharp relief beneath the off-white ruff of his coat. A long hand slides from the margin of yellowed pages, flapping toward the door without so much as a glance.

" _I have money_ so it's not a big - "

The book hits the cheap metal desk with a hollow ring. "Can't. Take it up with Cross."

"With - "

Doc's jaw works in a noiseless chew, narrowed eyes fixed resolutely on the scuffed plyboard desktop. "I'm gonna stop y'right there, toots."  His eyes meet Conrad's, and if there were ten years between them there were a thousand.  "Take. It up. With Cross."

"This has nothing to do with - "

Doc's voice cracks with exhaustion, "Fuck's sake, you four-eyed _tit_. I said no and I even took it upon my generous heart t'give you a fucking clue. Now scram before I abandon my sense 'a goddamn decorum, you turtle-necked face-ache." Dismissive fingertips flip a page of the textbook.    
  
A framed newspaper article clatters off its perch from the force of the slamming door.

**X x XxX xXx X xX**

"Uhn, Mr. Achenleck?"

"Hello, Hanna. We need to talk." Conrad pushes through the narrow doorway into the grimy little apartment, holding up a paper-pale hand to reassure the ever-watchful dead man on the sagging futon. He pulls at his scarf, fidgeting at loose threads with the snag of badly bitten fingernails. "I never paid you for getting rid of that bat, did I?"

Hanna reddens, grinning with too many teeth. "That bat kinda turned you into a vampire, dude."

"Well, actually," Conrad tries to lower his voice, but it still makes him _mad_ , "YOU turned me into a vampire. That bat was only half to blame."

Hanna's expression falls, and for all of everything he only resembles an exams-withered collegiate in sun-stained ginger curls and buddy holly glasses.  Nothing in the line of Hanna's bony shoulders begs his profession, much less his age.

Conrad shuffles sidelong, as if to escape the gut-pinch of guilt.  "At any rate, you got rid of her, didn't you?"

Hanna huffs, rolling a shoulder back to meet Conrad's inspection with resolute eye-contact and an even tone (that splinters the way it does when he's spent all night pontificating to the dead man).  "Mr. Achenleck, you _died_. I don't really call that a case, well, solved. So it's totally cool if you don't wanna foot the bill."

Conrad grits his teeth, counting to three. "I can 'foot the bill'. I _have_ a job and, unlike yours, this job is _regular_ and it _pays_."

"Hanna" the disturbing monotone of the dead man interrupts, and the lanky green gargoyle of him perched on the futon lifts his eyes from the book in his hands, glowing orange stare as weighty as a judgement were it not in a face so removed from scorn.  "I think your client wants to settle his debts. We need groceries."

Hanna nods, reluctantly.  

Conrad fishes a chequebook out of his messenger bag, pale knuckles rounded over a scribbling ballpoint. "I can also pay you whatever it is Worth is charging. I don't need that kind of charity; thanks all the same."

Hanna purses his lips, mouthing 'what' over Conrad's shoulder at the dead man, who simply shrugs. "Mr. Ach – "

Conrad Achenleck tears off the check and even though he's sort of being nice, still his voice tightens with anger, "Mr. Achenleck is what they called my grandfather. Please, it's Conrad."

"Heh. Okay, cool. Conrad." Another bony-shouldered shrug under a too-large rugby tee. "I dunno what you're talking about with Doc Worth. He's my doctor, so sometimes I give him, er... stuff for checkups and medicine and junk." A sniffle, palming the tip of his nose. "But I'm not paying him for any of your, um, stuff? You mean the blood, right?"

Conrad's lips are tight and pale, attention fixed on a far wall. "Yes. The, er, supplies."

"Right." Hanna is nodding, smoothing a greasy insomniac tangle of hair back from his forehead. "Not my department? You can try and pay the Doc directly if you wanna take care of it. Since you're, I guess, settling debts. Heh."

Conrad nods, already glaring towards the door. "Well, Hanna. Always a pleasure."

"Sure." Hanna waves, opening the door for his, well, maybe not _friend_ exactly. In a swoop, Conrad is gone. Hanna places the cheque carefully on an empty pizza box, crosses his arms and regards it like a dead thing discovered in his shoe. "Now whaddya suppose _that_ was about?"

Ezekiel/George/Ptolemy smiles, enigmatic, and shrugs with his eyebrows.  "A matter of Pride, perhaps," an emotion with which, one could tell, Mr. Cross had very little experience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The CGL series is inspired by many and much (if a ConWorth fanfic exists, I have read it, and you're going to see a LOT of influence built on the fantheories of others) but ESPECIALLY SO by DesdemonaKaylose and her [post-apocalyptic series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/24964).  Read  
> that ish, go go go.


	2. Chapter 2

  **X x XxX xXx X xX .** f u t u r e  **. Xx X xXx XxX x X**

  
Lucian Worth woke up in a cafe AU.

His long hand half lodged in a giant soup mug, thin cotton towel dangling damp over his wrist, bony arms bared by a carefully ironic t-shirt, scars knotted and long healed; knowledge threaded down his spine like working backwards from the flat of a pillow to remember an interrupted dream.  

The cafe was neat and modern; its clientele older, richer.  The lighting was dim, the music foreign and abstract, conversations lilting and smoky.

A customer was staring Luce down from across the counter with vivid purple eyes, perplexed.  "Oh shit," he breathed, blanching back into the tuck of his thick scarf.  "Sorry.  Nevermind, I guess."  The vampire skittered on down the bar to try for the next barista, find a decent meal to take home, leaving Luce with his hand in a soup mug and a whole year's dream crashing down around his ringing ears.

At some point last year Luce had nearly almost died, and forgotten it, and remembered now again.

An imposed sobriety sank thick in his bones, a sluggish ache.  The vampire blood he'd been ghouled by had chased off his longstanding opiate dependence, healed the webwork of scars up and down his limbs, filled him out a little from skeletal to just plain lanky.

The flashbacks tumbled piecemeal like dark ceramic gathered from its dusty crash to throw a coffee mug from a tile floor into his hands.

At some point last year Luce had strolled past a dark hallway of half-unpacked cardboard boxes, long legs bare and designer skivs riding low, undershirt damp with blood all down his shoulder.  The couch had caught his knees with a leather squeak, Conrad's mouth a dark smear of heat under his own, and in the tide-rush of the ghouling bond one want was mistaken for another because Lucian Worth had never been fucked half as well before or since.

Still wide-eyed, Luce began to shake.  He set the heavy mug down atop the padded towel with the others, fingering it into place, a familiar fidget, rote.  There were... ties, of a sorts, woven and beaded, wrapped close around his wrists and up between his trembling fingers.  Hipster jewelry, hemp by the texture.  One of the small wooden beads was a grimacing Aboriginal spirit-hunter.

At some point last year, Luce had stood in the rain to appeal against a rejection, chick-flick style, heart in his throat and dead phone in hand.  He had barked at Conrad that they were both too fucking old for this shit, them on the bridge there in the night rain, and leaned in to better hear the counter remand, leaned in too close too quick and found himself bitten, kissed, kissing, arousal unwinding hot between his legs, bitten again, climax soaking into his hip down the inseam of his jeans.  He could still recall the thud-ring of the guard rail as they'd collided, all grasping fists and shivers and heaves, thunder striking overhead.

Conrad approached the door through the bustling post-dinner crowd in a dark tan Carhardt jacket, the working uniform of the shipping docks (that Hanna was hawking against a smuggler ring), shuffling gormlessly along in thick shapeless denims and steeltoe stompers.  The pale wash of fluorescent streetlamp lit Conrad's dead face with an ethereal glow and for a few breaths Luce felt his limbs still, his racing heart calm.

At some point last year, Luce had lain against jagged rubble while his life pooled out dark across the cobblestones, steam rising in the early morning chill.  He'd woken stuffed into a moldy curio, wrapped around a vampire like two sardines vacuum-sealed into the can.  The gunshot wound had ached and throbbed in its makeshift bandaging, and Conrad had peeled his mouth from the road-rash scrape across Luce's jaw to hiss a demand and it wasn't like that was the first time Worth had kissed anybody in gratitude or victory, no, and it wasn't even the first time he'd kissed Conrad, though further still in this moment events had been stolen from his memory to serve unknown plots and those too rose from behind this film reel of highlights, flickering backstories of blood and desperation and every time Worth thought it was the first time kissing Conrad goddamn Achenleck.

Bracing the heels of his palms on the counter edge, Luce shut his eyes, grumbled a non-answer of reassurance at his coworker, who wanted to clock out early to see about a date with that patron in the scarf.  The door ding'd melodiously and Luce pushed himself away from the counter, tugged his apron off over his head, nodded his greeting as Conrad caught his eye, headed toward the open end of the bar.

The script went, that Luce would meet Conrad in that server alcove out of view with a half-hug and they would mumble vanilla inquiry; how was yer day, tired, have dinner yet?  And if Luce actually was tired, Conrad would squeeze around his waist an extra time before letting go, and if Conrad hadn't eaten yet then Luce would nose in for a kiss, a starter sample, a tease.  And Luce would leave work, if it was time to leave work; and Conrad would pretend to drink something soy-tainted and organic in a corner booth if it was not.

Luce went off-script, tonight, and the reach over Conrad's night-chilled shoulder for the embrace turned into a rough collaring and a haul into the drystock pantry.

"Wh-" Conrad's hands went up, expression crooked with a doubtful laugh.  "Fuck, Luce, not in public maybe."  
  
This gave Luce pause - Conrad hadn't called him 'Worth' for some time yet, but in this waking moment the dissonance struck especially hard.  The air between he and Conrad in that small dim room turned sharply delicate, Conrad searching Luce's expression for explanation, cue, and all Luce could do was _stare_ , hard and cold, until Conrad flinched.

Two roads diverged in the moment, and Luce could either take the path that led he and Conrad back to their humble downtown flat to fall asleep watching tv like the duffy old couple they were, or he could stay woke, both figuratively and literally, and get mad.  Madder than hell.  Madder than anything.  Madder than fighting, than striking or shoving or insults.

As it stood, Luce was too many years past the righteous vigor of 30; and those were years enough that he already knew whatever answers could be demanded. The bad shock of the sudden wake had burned right through whatever reserve of calories his bone-dead metabolism was ever capable of holding over past lunch, so Luce _was_ hungry.  And tired.  And he wanted for a cigarette, but the deal at some point this past year was that if he quit the smokes for a month straight then Conrad would stop shoving his blood down Luce's throat, let him have his independent health and emotional fuckdamn privacy.

Conrad snapped his fingers in front of Luce's face, expression crumpled in dawning concern.  "You're shivering."

"Had a scare," Luce growled, stuffing his resentment over the cigarettes down, shuffling closer to press his nose into Conrad's thick ruff of black hair, mouth flat against the cold plane of Conrad's forehead. "Lordy," Luce huffed, knowing full well his relief to being so near had as much to do with Conrad being his patron fucking vampire as it did with Conrad being his pretend goddamn boyfriend.

Luce squeezed the back of Conrad's neck and then slapped his shoulder in a chuff, pulling away.  "You smell like lowtide."

Conrad scoffed, straightening his glasses, half following Luce from the drystock, "Had to stay the day in the ship bow, so I could let the scooby-doo-crew back in come sundown."

"Hn."  Luce was at the latte machine, fixing himself a thick cocoa to stave off the adrenaline headache, mumbling affirmatives for a few orders passed down by their incoming staff and bustling about the artisan bread rack and its adjoining toaster to fulfil those orders before clock-out.

Conrad watched from the doorway, arms crossed loosely, as much a familiar fixture as the sepia photography on the walls.  Nobody greeted him and he greeted nobody, vampiric and subtle, sighing quietly to himself as he watched the crowd of guests in from the street, a steady line of styrofoam cups and waxpaper baggies, earthy coffee smells and savory yeasts.

Luce handed off the last of the ciabattas and dusted down the front of his carefully ironic t-shirt as he bid goodnight to the now fully engaged cafe crew.  He snagged Conrad's jacket front in passing, cocoa in one hand already half consumed, steeling his nerves if not his bloodsugar and christ he was getting old.  "How much do you remember from last year?" Luce grumbled under breath, swiping his ID through the time punch.

Conrad blinked wide.  "Uhb.  We met your sister upstate, moved into the flat about October, um."  A dry swallow. "You see somebody from the Caliphate?  Not a friendly."

"Yehyehyeh," Luce waved irritably.  "I mean no.  Fuck.  At what point do you remember -" and he couldn't finish the accusation, because that accusation was _absurd_ .  "Why'd ya do it," he finished weakly, instead, kicking open the heavy back door to the parking lot of the plaza.  Luce left the building like a ship from a storm-tossed pier, all flail and heave.  "Why the shitfisting _fuck_ did you - all of - all of _this_ -" A furious encompass of their surroundings.

Conrad hung back against the door and the small cement steps, owl-eyed.  "Do what?" he croaked, bruised at the edges.  "Last year I decided to say yes to things up until the point I'd need to say no, and we haven't yet found that point, so," he flapped his arms idly at his sides like a penguin, dusting docksmear from his denim.  "If you're having another _crisis_ about that, maybe just don't?  We're not exactly -"

"Stop saying 'we'!" Luce demanded, voice ringing off cement.  "I'm fucked.  You're fucked.  This is fucked.   _We_ are not fucked, because _we_ aren't any goddamn thing!"

Conrad took a long breath, got comfortable against the stair railing, eyes narrowing behind his glasses.  "So you found something to say no to.  Let's hear it, then."

Apoplectic, "Thuh fugging _mindfuck_ for starts!"

Conrad's nose wrinkled.  "What?"

Luce spiked his drink on the lot, marched up, tired and hungry and smarting, and took the stairs so that all six-foot-four of him could tower over Conrad's five-eight.  "You don't know," Worth breathed, hard, realizing.  His hands braced the rail on either side of Conrad's hips.  "You didn't vampire-brainwash me," half a question.

"God, _no,_ " and Conrad does look worried, now, but his posture settles forward comfortably into Luce's lean and the vague emphatic aura shared between them still reads more of fondness and concern than guilt - god, no, not even a trace of guilt, and if it was one thing Luce knew Connie to burden hisself with it was self-fucking-flagellation, so.

Luce studies Conrad carefully.  "But a'course _you_ ain't been brainwashed, bein' the same sort what can't get got."  He pulls back, nodding, fingers hooked tight against the rail.  "And you probably hadn't gone fishing around inside'a my headspace for evidence of fuckery, not least because you're a goddamn Pollyanna - but I'm telling you now, it's been doctored.  Jimmy'd.  Whole damn thing since last year; rigged."

Conrad's attention skips from Worth's eyes to his mouth, to his neck.  "Um," he answers uncertainly.  The laugh is small and bitter and familiar and his breath is iron-tangy against Luce's chin.  He pulls back to a sit atop the guard rail, biting the side of his cheek, eyebrows stuck in their crunch of concern, confusion.  "What whole thing?"

Luce's breath gutters.  

At some point last year the conversation had been had in that high threadcount cocoon, tucked away against winter night chill, squat spaceheater fanning the smell of burnt dust from the bedroom doorway.  Conrad's ankle had been hooked snug against Luce's calf, limbs tangled and wrapped, cheek to pillow and forehead to neck.  It didn't get a label, just a collection of yes and no and maybe between them, that was all.

And here Worth was, stripped of his delusions, hollow with the dread of knowing that he'd been headfucked, brought to realization by some random encounter, reminded why he even started the clinic that by now sat empty and boarded up like an old crime scene.

Conrad matched the silent sigh, probing their blood tether, an itch in the back of Worth's thoughts.  "Luce?" he prompted quietly, more grunt than syllable.

Worth set his jaw, stepped between Conrad's knees, kissed him dry and full but kept pushing, leaning, shoving until Conrad was dumped over the side of the rail into the waiting trash-heap, all flail and cuss.  Glowering, Worth left the stairs for the lot, the street, the subway.

Conrad rode three seats ahead, a bright ink smudge of black and tan in that green underground wash, paper-white skin, cartoonishly red eyes flashing up from behind thick dweeby frames.  Worth probably needed glasses to resolve the static of anything three feet away from his nose, but Conrad he could see very clearly - vividly saturated, high contrast and chest-ache beautiful in that workman's costume.  Worth stretched out his arm, tapped the hard plastic top of the seating, catching Conrad's attention because it pleased him to have it.

"I didn't brainwash you," Conrad protested quietly, sidling over until they were sat hip to hip.

"I know, hon."

Conrad paused, breath punching past his teeth at the endearment.  He blinked, bit his lips together, inhaled. "You did change a bit, last year.  I didn't fucking presume to know you well enough to make that observation out loud, but there were obvious, uh, differences."  And there it was, the sour curl of guilt in the tether.  "Chalked it up to sobriety."

"You ghouled me before the mindfuck."

"I... did," Conrad read the air, remembering.  "You had a concussion, we think.  Weren't waking up.  Blood everywhere."

"Headers tend ta bleed a lot, real showy like."  Worth shrugs, knuckles curling against the back of Conrad's neck, stroking, reverent.  This was part of the ghouling, he knew, this urge to be a source in Conrad's life, for blood or comfort.  This fascination, fixation, for an otherwise spectacularly goofy jackass.  "I weren't no kinda happy about it."

"You were bloody incensed," Conrad agreed, slouching.  "And about a week later, suddenly fine?  Is that when... er."

"Nyeah," Worth drawls, considering, fingers dug into the short hair at the back of Conrad's head.  "Guess it musta been."  He shifts in the seat, feeling the tug in his gut as the train slows for its first stop.  "Didn't even fucking remember who you were, straight away.  Just another spook in Hanna's cadre, right?"

Conrad scoffed, unimpressed, hands disappearing into his pockets.  "Guess that explains why you _hit on_ me."

Worth frowns.  "I always hit on you.  Hit on errybody."

Wide-eyed, "Not like _that_ you don't.  Jesas, we thought the head-injury had done permanent damage!"

"Might have," Worth considered, humming low from the bottom of his lungs, missing the tobacco-tar rattle.  At some point last year, Luce had followed the tug of the ghouling tether without thought (or memory) on its origins, mistaking the bond as romantic attraction, seeding the start of this current situation.  A little more than a year ago, Worth's life had been given a hard reset - but by whom or why he had no idea, and now suspected his relationship with Conrad to have been completely accidental, an unplanned side-effect.

Worth didn't exactly have room to complain - but the questions buzzed through the gaps that remained in his memories and all things considered it was kinda hard to believe Conrad had turned such a venomous leaf for a new one, a them, a they, a 'we' and an end to the bloodied knuckles, split lips.  Traded in for furtive handjobs and pinning, cursing, biting lov - hhh, fucking.  It was all just too bizarre, suspiciously idyllic.  Didn't sit right in his guts, Conrad suddenly playing house like this.

"We'll ring Hanna," Worth answers himself, nodding at Conrad's piqued interest.  "E's a detective, ain't he?  Get this mess sorted, maybe find out who blank-slated me."

"And why anybody would need to do that," Conrad finished, frown pulled back.

"Feh.  I s'spect the why.  Hanging around all up in the politics, ain't I?  Just a malleable mortal, peeping on some secrets your sort probably want to stay secretive."  Worth claps Conrad's far shoulder, jostling him in an embrace, standing forward as the train slows near their stop.  "Which I'd be happy to oblige without me brains getting turned to vegetable soup, yeh?"

Conrad hummed an affirmative, ambling forward alongside, easy and familiar.  His stride went slightly longer, Worth's slightly shorter, pacing through the crowd in step.  People parted before them naturally - Worth for his height and Conrad for his otherworldly menace, and Worth couldn't help but feel the warm soak of pride in his navel for that.

At some point last year Luce had fallen asleep on a couch in a dark house, the weekend news playing across the moderately sized flatscreen of that sittingroom, Conrad lounging beside him like they'd known (and liked) each other for years and not mere days.  At the time Luce had chalked that up to the potency of his own charm (and Conrad being a vampire and those fairly easy to court) but tonight it all made better sense - they _had_ known each other for years.

The 'liking' bit had yet to be explained.


	3. Chapter 3

**X x XxX xXx X xX .** p a s t  **. Xx X xXx** **XxX x X**

The car skid and juddered until it hit the lamp post, and then Conrad was out in the night air chasing the woman he felt an inexorable pull to protect, a hot heavy hand landing square at his back to duck him under gun fire -

his soft bat body hit the pavement of the road with a painful scuff and his dewclaws found the biting cold iron edge of a sewer lid in his scramble for safety.  Unholy strength (from such a small body) flung the manhole disk free to unfoot the hunter bearing down on his - on Adelaide -

She carried him on her pale neck the ladder down, tucked between hair that smelled like dry leaflitter and a shirt collar that smelled like cheap detergent and greasy takeout.

"Hanna," Conrad had prompted in a rasping squeak, trembling in the throes of unprecedented emotional turmoil.  "You owe him."

Adelaide sighed, hovering effortlessly down the sewer path while Worth and Toucey splashed after, their cell phone lights glinting off cement and piping.  "Where."

"Corner of Hastings and Pennfield," Conrad piped, itching with his struggle to hold his form, paralyzed by the idea of rematerializing naked in such an environment.  "The McMansion with the belfry.  Can't miss it."

"And what do you propose we do, once we've set upon this house?"  Adelaide purred, claiming a turn down what Conrad hoped was the correct direction.  "I wager you've not secured an invitation from Doctor Tibenoch.  Rather... _inhospitable_ , that man."

Worth's cloud of cuss rang closer, startling Conrad from his tightly wound temper, "Oi, Monty, yer spooky girlfriend knows the creep what likes to kidnap kids offa the street.  Color me surprised."

But Lamont Toucey merely deadpanned, "I'm telling Hanna you called him a kid again."

"Up," Adelaide instructed, much sooner than Conrad would have assumed - and the shoulder dropped out from under him as she melted down into bat form.  They both landed in a heap of shirt and trou, Adelaide's claws braced against Conrad's face so she could peer past the awkward cling of his glasses.  "Who  _are_ you?" she demanded in that familiar sour drawl.

Conrad blustered as Worth and Toucey stepped past - obviously he and Adelaide could not enter the house, and owed no hurry to expose themselves to the street needlessly.  "You don't even REMEMBER ME??"  Conrad squeaked, scrabbling to dislodge his Matron's grasp.

"You don't seem particularly memorable," Adelaide shrugged, but her vicious irreverence had waned to honest suspicion.  "Except you smell like Family.  Are you one of Nathaniel's?"  She put her dewclaw to her chin, tiny nail rubbing the underside of a bared fang.  "Forgive me, darling, he does get around.  You learn to stop keeping track."

Conrad could not articulate his rage - and for a moment simply tried not to swallow his own tiny bat tongue.  "Fuck," he gasped instead, chest heaving with the first symptoms of a mounting panic attack.

"Don't take it personally, fussfangs.  Monogamy is  _unevolved_."

"MonogaWHAT?"

Adelaide only snickered, and flapped to the third rung of the rusting sewer ladder, there to perch upside down, preening.

Conrad took the opportunity to borrow the discarded clothing - holding the trousers up in a fist as he ascended back to human form, a weird stretching itch in his bones as his grip on his fear was forcibly relaxed, the magic unknotted to slither out just below his skin.  Adelaide followed in the shirt, and the two of them could have been college kids out from the houseparty game of strip-poker, as ruffled but pristine as they had emerged from the sewers - and for half a heartbeat Conrad supposed he shouldn't be all that angry for his circumstances, if vampirism came with an automatic resistance to grime.  "I'm not Nathaniel's," he clarified on the way to the overgrown yard of the target mansion.  "You menaced my flat.  Recently."

"Well!" Adelaide cackled, spinning on heel to eye Conrad head to toe.  "I hardly recognized you, without all the pathetic mewling and aura of insurmountable failure."

"My LIFE was PERFECTLY SUCCESSFUL, before you -"

But the mansion sounded with commotion, and Conrad whirled to narrow his eyes up and down its imposing frame.  "How did they  _get in_?"

Adelaide tapped Conrad in the side of his bare ribs, then pointed down at the slab of cobbled stones that made up the top front step.

" _Trap door??"_

Adelaide lifted her chin and pinched her eyes shut, sighing.  "Key under a false rock, Junior.  Shall I follow, now, to rescue your boyfriend?"  
  
"MY WH-  I DON'T HAVE A- I'M NOT-" then, shooing frantically as realization dawned, "YES, JUST _GO_.  Fuck!"

Adelaide dusted down her shirt, tugged the hem a little more securely over her thighs, and glided over the threshold of the Tibenoch Manse.

Conrad fumed to himself, sat anxiously on the steps, until the first scuff of canvas sneaker over those cobbled stones.


End file.
